Jason Mackenzie, HTC's global president of sales, sat down for an interview, in which he revealed some pretty interesting tidbits from the kitchen of smartphone making.

The big story here is that he is convinced Samsung borrowed the Burst Shot mode of its phone cameras, which debuted with the HTC One X and One S. It is not only Samsung, though, as soon each and every manufacturer, like LG or Sony, also introduced some sort of burst shot regimes in their camera apps, while Sony even borrowed HTC's idea to place the stills and video shutter keys on one and the same screen, instead of switching back and forth, which you can see in the Xperia Z.

We're changing the culture within HTC. Our culture has always embraced this "quietly brilliant" mentality, which meant the good things about being humble. But we've been too quiet. We're embracing that we need to be a challenger. HTC is a company fighting against two of the biggest companies in the world, Apple and Samsung, who have a lot of resources. So we're embracing that.

What that means is we will be a lot more aggressive in our communication. We need to take ownership of our innovations. So if I think about last year, the HTC One X; great product. We had this "amazing camera, authentic sound" message, but it was too vague. We didn't communicate well why it was an a amazing camera. We essentially worked for our competitors in some cases, where we launched these great things like burst mode, and then we let Samsung come in and suck in our innovation and own it in the consumer's mind.

So the first thing we're doing with those big innovations I took you through--BlinkFeed, BoomSound and the UltraPixel camera--we're actually trademarking these terms, we're going to own them and we're going to be very aggressive about how we communicate those. The second thing is we're going to be a lot more strategic in how we're marketing. We'll have an "always on" approach. Before we've come out in these four- or five- or maybe eight-week bursts around a product. Now you will see HTC aggressively market throughout the year.

On the question why the innovative BlinkFeed news board that gives you curated always-on snippets of info on topics of your choosing from more than 140 content providers HTC has struck a deal with, looks like Microsoft Windows Phone's Live Tiles concept, he answered:

If what you mean is that there are squares on it, you're right. But Live Tiles on Windows is static information. They're widgets, essentially. What this is, is a newsfeed that's constantly updating. So every time I turn on my phone I can feed through it and I can get to the latest information. The phone is alive from that perspective. That's a big innovation that we think fits consumers. And then it's also a fantastic differentiator where, when you see this in ads and things, this is going to say HTC BlinkFeed.

Posts: 403; Member since: Oct 05, 2012

posted on Mar 11, 2013, 6:14 AM 16

You can look at it this way: Samsung has been selling the most number of devices since the S2 days. But not every company can get jealous of them/ want to blast their asses at the same time. Surely, Samsung is doing something wrong to piss all other manufacturers. Sometimes by maybe stealing other innovations as and when they manufacture parts for others and bring it to their devices before supplying the number of parts that a company asked for first.

posted on Mar 11, 2013, 6:23 AM 11

Posts: 403; Member since: Oct 05, 2012

If you are talking about something when around s2, then Yes.
They made some mistakes most regarding with iphones.
Sammy even knows they need to pay some money.
Not that amount of money from stupid jury in US.
But this thing, burst mode?
Is that really the best one they could think of?
Sounds more stupid than rectangle thing
Lame

posted on Mar 11, 2013, 6:46 AM 5

Er, I'm not saying about the burst mode in particular. AFAIK, some phones and maybe even cameras have had burst mode before the HOX. But, it does seem Samsung is not as innovative as it makes itself to be. You see, apple has about a dozen of broad/vague patents that shouldn't have been granted, Nokia has been complaining about the displays of samsung and so has been LG. Surely, there's more than what is meeting the eye. But obviously, they have been making some of the best hardware which is aided by the android ecosystem, just that they don't seem innovative or revolutionary IMO.

posted on Mar 11, 2013, 6:51 AM 7

Posts: 403; Member since: Oct 05, 2012

I got your point
But did you ever think that companies have started to bash Sammy because Sammy has become a mainstream?
For example, look the other chinese MFs.
They seem to copy everything but no one cares.
And the innovation....
Now days no one can easily invent something big..if you do, you are in the list of novel prize.
So improving the things already exist can be innovative too which many companiea are doing now.
And Sammy is quite good at that

posted on Mar 11, 2013, 7:16 AM 6

Innovation, well we can have our own interpretations of that word. It's not just about inventing something big you see. Apple did come up with the best phone at that time, with the OG iPhone 5 years ago. Did it have anything super-extraordinary, out of the blue? No, what it did was just merged the existing technologies and delivered a killer product that many craved for, resulting in the iPhone becoming a brand. Sammy did the same with the S2 and Note, and struck a goldmine. The next ones ie the S3 and Note 2 felt like obvious hardware upgrades from the S3/Note. Well, Nokia did bring about a better way of capturing images with the 808, but it resulted in a phone that was larger than average. It resulted in the PureView brand. The first gen Lumias were pretty underwhelming IMO, but the 920 did bring another good tech in the form of Super-sensitive display (synaptics was behind it, no doubt).

posted on Mar 11, 2013, 1:50 PM 0

Posts: 353; Member since: Mar 06, 2013

posted on Mar 11, 2013, 6:12 AM 0

Posts: 403; Member since: Oct 05, 2012

Cmon man
Do you really think HTC used burst mode before digital cameras? lol
I bet the other phones would have burst mode regardless of HTC one x and the burst mode is camera feature which has been here many years.
In that jerk's theory from HTC, Sammy might sue if any other smart phone use stylus in their phablet lol
So fair huh?

posted on Mar 11, 2013, 7:06 AM 3

Posts: 34; Member since: Mar 13, 2012

posted on Mar 11, 2013, 7:13 AM 7

Posts: 476; Member since: Nov 24, 2012

Don't argue with Sammy boys... they will never accept anything against them...
What samsung fans think?.. Every smartphone company is mad... Samsung is the biggest copy cat... And you talk about stylus on phablet? Motorola can file case against every company that manufacture's cellular device and Nokia on every smartphone being soled in the market.... Wake up.... Kid

posted on Mar 11, 2013, 7:19 AM 4

Posts: 57; Member since: Apr 26, 2011

posted on Mar 11, 2013, 9:29 AM 2

Posts: 157; Member since: Feb 23, 2013

I missed the patenting and sueing parts. what I did see was trademarking. others could still use things like burst mode, but there world be restrictions on the turm. if Sammy trademarked stylus or S-pen others could call it an E-pen or something, and just have to make sure it does not look 100% the same.
if HTC had trademarked it's burst mode that would just mean others would be calling it rapid shots or something. all this will do is force others to bring a little more creativity to the table when using something that someone else already used and trademarked. And what's wrong with more creativity.

posted on Mar 11, 2013, 8:06 AM 2

Didnt Apple and HTC come to some agrrement where there was to be no lawsuits between the two for 10yrs? sounds like Apple is actually influencing how htc is"oh were trademarking the material on our phones, hell were guna trademark the words cell, phone, and ONe"
Yup HTC is the new Apple in terms of attitude towards someone elses success.

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